Royal Signals at Military Establishment 8 (M.E.8), SOE (Cairo) and in Manopoli, Siena, and Naples

My deceased father, David (Dave) Griffith, was a radio mechanic and electrician in the Royal Signals and I’ve recently been going through his Military Service File from the MOD and although many of the abbreviations were puzzling at first, I’ve pretty much managed to decipher everything. After training at Prestatyn, Catterick, and Thirsk, he travelled to Egypt on the “Queen Mary” with draft ROFYY, which departed Gourock, Clyde on 22 December 1942 and arrived at Suez on 18 January 1943 (via Freetown, Cape Town, and Aden).

He was posted to M.E.8 (which was associated with the SOE) at Mena (south west of Cairo) for 2 years from January 1943. I’ve attached a photo of M.E.8 camp taken from one of the pyramids, which shows how close it was to the Sphinx. The arrow points to the transmission house. Does anyone have any information on M.E.8 or the Royal Signals in Cairo?

After serving with the M.E.F, he was part of the C.M.F. in Italy: No. 5 Special Wireless Section (Jan 1945, ?based in Manopoli), then the 713 Special Signals Coy. (May 1945, ?based in Siena), finishing at the No. 2 Coy, 11 Line of Communications based in Naples (Nov 1945 to Nov 1946). I’m interested in any information on these units.

I have a number of photos of Dad with others based at M.E.8 and also in Naples, including group shots, which he carefully labelled – happy to share these with anyone who might be interested. Let me know if you would like me to check for any specific names.

 

Hello! My father was in the soe, part of force 133 sea ops. I saw on a file he was attached to m.e. 142 at some point but i have no idea what that was.

 

Welcome to the forum. It is worth searching the Imperial War Museums "Collections" for the word "Monopoli" limiting the search to "digital" because, leaving aside some references to "monopoly" the board game, there are a fair number of tapes available to hear free on line concerning SOE and the place. I listened to this tape recently; it is worth a listen. ( I have not searched for all records, e.g. private papers, photographs, etc.)

Creator

Murray Lee, Peter (interviewee/speaker)
Production date
1984-04

Catalogue number
7493

 

Thanks for that information, i will give it a try!